Digital Preservation Services is supporting a multi-institutional initiative to establish a Greek Digital Journal Archive (GDJA) / Tο Αρχείο Ελληνικών Ψηφιοποιημένων Περιοδικών] (ΑΕΨΠ). This effort ensures open online access via JSTOR to 19th and early 20th century Greek language journals and newspapers drawn from the collections of collaborating institutions.
The GDJA consortium was formed in 2018 to address the lack of representation of Greek and Cypriot materials in collaborative library projects in North America. The GDJA fills an important gap in open-access scholarly resources in Modern Greek Studies, addressing the marginalization of Greek scholarship within area studies of the United States. By providing access to high-quality images and searchable full text, the GDJA facilitates historical research in the humanities and social sciences, as well as linguistic text mining of 19th and early 20th-century works.
Many resources in Harvard Libraries pertinent to the goals of the GDJA were digitized in 2005-2008 as part of the Google Books Library Project (GBLP). Since then, these materials have been preserved for access in the Library’s Digital Repository Service (DRS), the Library’s central platform for long-term management and preservation of its growing digital collections. The availability of the Greek language items in the DRS meant that Harvard could contribute immediately to GDJA, without having to pursue additional digitization or determining if the material was available from external sources such as the HathiTrust consortium. While Harvard is a founding member of HathiTrust, established to provide an independent academic home for the GBLP material, retrieving the material from there would have led to a more complicated and time-consuming workflow. Instead, it was straightforward to transfer copies of the preserved materials from the DRS to JSTOR. While this specific purpose was not anticipated at the time the journals were originally scanned, this kind of adaptive reuse is an important benefit enabled by the Library’s careful preservation of the materials under its stewardship.
Πανδώρα Σύγγραμμα Περιοδικόν [Pandōra Syngramma Periodikon], 1860 (t. 11): p. 4 https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.36371907
This image above from “Pandōra, Syngramma Periodikon” (1850-1872) is a fitting example of what the GDJA offers researchers. This journal began publication twenty years after the emergence of the modern Greek state, making it an invaluable historical resource for understanding the cultural and intellectual climate of the time. Described as a “literary and family” magazine, it played a crucial role in introducing foreign literature and poetry in translation to a Greek audience. The journal also served as a platform for some of the most important Greek writers of the period, helping to showcase their work and establish their reputation.
Dr. Peter Jeffreys, Associate Professor of English at Suffolk University and noted Cavafy scholar, expressed his enthusiasm for the work of the GDJA: “The digitization of journalistic material from the 19th century is immensely important to scholars as these papers and journals contain many unexpected finds and were a unique amalgamation of contributions from the Greek Kingdom, the Greek diaspora, and the cultural centers of Greek learning that were at their zenith prior to 1922. They constitute a hybrid collection replete with translations of European writers who helped define a Greek cosmopolitanism that has since vanished.”
Rhea Lesage, Librarian for Hellenic Studies and Coordinator of Classics in the Humanities and Social Sciences Collection Development of Widener Library, and GDJA Steering Committee member, similarly highlights the importance of the availability of these materials: “By providing free access to 19th and early 20th-century Greek publications, the GDJA sheds light on Greek cultural history, providing new paths of inquiry and scholarship, and enabling a deeper understanding of Greek society and culture during that period. Harvard Library’s Digital Preservation Services plays a critical role in the GDJA project, and we are grateful for their continued support in this pioneering initiative.”
The Greek journal content contributed to the GDJA are preserved in the DRS alongside over 10.8 million other digital resources comprising 230 million files totaling 500 TB. These materials encompass all disciplines pertinent to the University’s research, teaching, and learning mission. Its careful stewardship and preservation by Digital Preservation Services opens up other possibilities for current and future creative use and transformational reuse of Harvard’s deep, broad, rich, and unique collections.
